Dear colleague!

I received your letter and the letter from Vitimsky. I was very glad to receive word from him.

But the content of his letter greatly disturbed me.

You write, and as secretary*, apparently on behalf of the editorial board, — that "the editorial board principally considers my article entirely acceptable, including my position on the liquidators." If that is so, why does "Pravda" obstinately, systematically strike out from my articles and from the articles of other colleagues any mention of the liquidators?? Do you not know that they already have their candidates? We know this for a fact. We have received official reports about this from one southern city, where there is a deputy from the workers' curia**. Undoubtedly, the situation is the same in other places.

The silence of "Pravda" is more than strange. You write: "the editorial board considers it a clear misunderstanding" "the suspicion that it is striving toward the legalization of the platform's demands."

But agree with me that this is a fundamental question, one that determines the entire spirit of the publication, and moreover, a question inseparably linked with the question of the liquidators. I have not the slightest inclination toward "suspicions"; you know from experience that I treat even your censorial corrections with great patience. But a fundamental question requires a direct answer.

One cannot leave a contributor without clarification as to whether the editorial board intends to conduct the election section of the newspaper against the liquidators, naming them clearly and precisely, or not. There is no middle ground and there cannot be one.

If the article "must be published one way or another" (as the editorial secretary writes), then how is one to understand Vitimsky's claim that "the angry tone is harmful"? Since when is an angry tone against that which is harmful, damaging, incorrect (and after all, the editorial board "principally" agrees!), harmful to a daily newspaper?? On the contrary, colleagues, by God, on the contrary. To write about something harmful without "anger" — that means to write dully. And you yourselves point out — and rightly — the monotony!

Furthermore, concerning the article about the 9th of November (reply to a correspondent) I have long had no answer94. I repeat my request:

* This refers to V. M. Molotov. —Ed.

** This refers to the city of Kharkov. —Ed.